SirX: a selective inversion recovery experiment on X-nuclei for the determination of the exchange rate of slow chemical exchanges between two sites.

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has proven to be powerful for the study of dynamic processes. A new pulse sequence, SirX, is designed to provide boundary conditions that simplify the McConnell equations. Both an initial rate approximation and a whole curve fitting to the time course of magnetization can be used to calculate the exchange rate. These methods were used to study the exchange kinetics of N,N-dimethylacetamide. As compared with the well-established exchange spectroscopy suitable to studies of slow exchange, SirX has the advantage of being less time consuming and capable of providing more reliable kinetic data. Furthermore, by setting the observation on X-nuclei with larger chemical shift dispersion as compared with an observation on (1)H resonance, SirX extends the upper limit of a reliable determination of exchange rates.